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A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

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Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#91

Post by YellOh »

adasdasdas wrote: post #84
YellOh wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're equivocating between your stereotype of nihilism and what "real nihilists" "should" do to be considered a nihilist. Nihilism != depression, even if there is overlap, and it's useful to let the words have different meanings. There are a decent number of people who are nihilists without meeting your assumptions above (though they're probably less salient, as if someone seems functional & not-miserable, people do…

I'm not equivocating anything, my test for nihilism is very simple, "do you have anything meaningful in your life". What I mentioned earlier are symptoms or forms of nihilism. What I hate is when people describe nihilism as "Well, I don't believe there is meaning but also I find satisfaction in the small things in life" or "There's no point in life, the point of life is to live". It's always the same pattern of rejec…

Does someone occasionally getting small satisfactions equal them thinking there is meaning in life? If so, we're using very different definitions of meaning. I think people can think there is no meaning and also be capable of occasional positive experiences.

(I don't understand the second quote so can't comment on it.)

One of my favorite poems is Be Drunk[0]. Would you take someone agreeing with the "thesis" of Be Drunk (thinking it's necessary to numb yourself against meaninglessness through diversions like alcohol or poetry) as unable to be a nihilist, because they are capable of distracting themselves from meaninglessness?

[0] https://poets.org/poem/be-drunk

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ETA: I don't think "is there anything meaningful in your life" uses the word "meaning" in the same was as the question "does life have meaning." Maybe the below commentor was totally correct about us all talking past each other, because the first question seems to ask "does anything reliably bring you joy" while the second asks "is there a purpose to existence." Someone could have things that matter to them while still thinking existence is purposeless.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#92

Post by dsmithatx »

lusus_naturae wrote: post #80
adasdasdas wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes back to the answer to the question of, "what is the meaning of life", or its darker brother of a question "why bother living when you can kill yourself and end the suffering". A Christian might respond with, "God tells me to live and spread the gospel, raise children, and feed the needy". A Christian will tell you that this is how you ought to think too because all truth comes from the bible, which is why I c…

> A real nihilist in my opinion would probably kill themself Nihlism is acknowledging that many if not all aspects that result in "life" are pointless. I fail to understand how that equates to no will to live life. There is only irrationality to living while acknowledging the pointlessness of it. According to the nihilist, every other justification is flimsy at best, so justifying the pointless is equally irrational…

Agreed. I became a nihilist as a teenager and still believe life mostly has no meaning. Humans will all die and the earth will keep turning. I don't really believe in an afterlife.

At the same time a person gets miserable going against the grain of society and thus you learn how to be content and how to keep your emotions in check. I do not see any conflict in these two things. I see it as the survival skills of a nihilist.

Your natural instinct will be to prosper in this life, it doesn't mean there is a bigger meaning than farting and dying.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#93

Post by adasdasdas »

jona-f wrote: post #90
adasdasdas wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, to me rejecting objective meaning is nihilism, what do you call it? The word closest to rejecting objective meaning is just non-religious because objective meaning is mostly a religious phenomenon. What matters is that the alternative is NOT just nihilism, but also existentialism.

Existentialism is one of those philosophies based on nihilism in my book.

That's fine if you want use your definition, but most existentialists consider nihilism the common enemy in a society without object meaning.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#94

Post by adasdasdas »

lusus_naturae wrote: post #80
adasdasdas wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It goes back to the answer to the question of, "what is the meaning of life", or its darker brother of a question "why bother living when you can kill yourself and end the suffering". A Christian might respond with, "God tells me to live and spread the gospel, raise children, and feed the needy". A Christian will tell you that this is how you ought to think too because all truth comes from the bible, which is why I c…

> A real nihilist in my opinion would probably kill themself Nihlism is acknowledging that many if not all aspects that result in "life" are pointless. I fail to understand how that equates to no will to live life. There is only irrationality to living while acknowledging the pointlessness of it. According to the nihilist, every other justification is flimsy at best, so justifying the pointless is equally irrational…

[flagged]

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#95

Post by kafkaesque »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #32

"Science taught me that it's all just atoms and the void, so there can't be any deeper point or purpose to the whole thing" Is this type of misunderstanding of what Science is that common? It's painfully lacking and I can't tell if it is written as sarcasm...

This is a great point. When I was studying philosophy in university, an extremely common roadblock to moving the discussion forward was that people (professor and students) were philosophizing about specialized topics that they themselves were not well informed on or held no expertise in. I think this is the problem with philosophy adding practical value to people's lives in general. We seek answers to questions that require specialized knowledge in areas in which we don't have sufficient knowledge in.

The discussions that were more fruitful were the ones where the professor asked if there was someone who majored in that specific subject in the class, and that person would be used as an expert to speak to whatever thing we were questioning, and since it was philosophy, we would question everything.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#96

Post by adasdasdas »

maxbond wrote: post #83
adasdasdas wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let's suppose for a moment you're mistaken. How would you recognize evidence to the contrary, were you to receive it? If you met a nihilist, you'd dismiss them, right? It's an approximately unfalsifiable construction. I think it's almost tautological. But most people are on a spectrum, there are extremely nihilistic people who still care about their mothers for example. But yea, I think that the spectrum of nihilis…

I'm gunnuh be blunt, and I mean no offense, but from what I've read of your arguments in this & adjacent subthreads, it seems you don't really understand what nihilism is and are actually talking about depression and suicidal ideation. You're saying very insensitive things about real people and a very touchy subject, and you've had multiple people explain to you at length what it is you've misunderstood about nihilis…

You're right in that I might be callous in the way I write, but meaning/purpose is very relevant to life and death, and I really dislike when people spread a message of meaninglessness in the form of nihilism. Now there might be language challenges here, but I believe that people with narrow definitions of meaning will struggle to find meaning because a persons thinking is somewhat bound by language. My view here is largely inspired from Camus[0]

[0]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/#SuiResAbs

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#97

Post by nurettin »

jononomo wrote: post #68

"Science taught me that it's all just atoms and the void, so there can't be any deeper point or purpose to the whole thing; the kind of meaning most people yearn for — Ultimate Meaning — simply doesn't exist." Sheesh, what kind of BS science did this guy get taught? Science discovered the Big Bang, which is essentially a proof of God's existence, and the more science we do around the molecular biology and the origin…

"Big bang cosmology proves (my particular brand of) The Almighty God" is what is known in the academia as "Facebook science".

It may sound great, it may conform to your beliefs, it may be satisfying to say, and feel just right. But I'd imagine out of the thousands upon thousands of papers published on the topic of big bang cosmology, there would be just one which says "oh and by the way this is definitive proof that a God exists".

And none do.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#98

Post by gxs »

pcwelder wrote: post #85

> Supposing there's no ultimate, objective, metaphysical thing called meaning I disagree that there can't be a rationally derived objective utility function (purpose of life) that we can assign to ourselves. For one thing, we can objectively discard some types of utility functions, for example, the utility functions that have arbitrary discontinuity in time. One also might argue, for example, that utility functions s…

>> I disagree that there can't be a rationally derived objective utility function (purpose of life) that we can assign to ourselves.

Ah, I love HN for these types of comments - I’m not even being facetious here.

The author casually dismisses the idea that you make/find your own meaning, then spends the rest of the article doing exactly that.

He’s trying to find an explanation for the general case, yet in the end it will be his own personal opinion explanation. Interesting article, nonetheless.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#99

Post by disco_framework »

lisper wrote: post #55
disadvantage wrote: post #17

> In lieu of meaning, I mostly adopted the attitude of Alan Watts. Existence, he says, is fundamentally playful. It's less like a journey, and more like a piece of music or a dance. And the point of dancing isn't to arrive at a particular spot on the floor; the point of dancing is simply to dance. Vonnegut expresses a similar sentiment when he says, "We are here on Earth to fart around." Ikigai[0] is worth exploring…

> We are here on Earth to fart around. Except that we're not. We are here on earth to make copies of our DNA. There are some ancillary effects of this (like sex and eating and the internet) but it's not like life doesn't have a purpose at all. It's just not a particularly hifallutin' one.

Sure but that doesn't mean the two ideas are incompatible.

In fact the act of making copies of our DNA might be a great example of playful work. Sex is fun and it has the capacity to spread our genes.

Re: A Nihilist's Guide to Meaning (2016)

#100

Post by nkingsy »

I should have stopped at the beginning like the author recommended. I wholeheartedly agree with "play" as the central element.

And by play I mean to fully engage and enjoy the activity at hand. To be detached enough to stop and take stock of what's going on, to poke at things and see what happens, to care nothing for "time invested" because you know you enjoyed that time and will enjoy your time spent digging back in the other direction.

It is so so easy to lose that playful approach. Thousands of times per day I find myself drifting into attachment and boredom and some days I start there and never get out. It think this is probably the real benefit of meditation: building muscles to redirect yourself back to playful detachment. Maybe tomorrow I'll start a practice.

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